by John C. Harris
17 August 2021
“They were laying the paper out on the floor of the living room, really cutting and pasting, typing different articles and cutting and pasting them by hand…and taking them to a local printer”
Heidi Boghosian evokes this image of her first experience with the underground press in the Lower East Side in her oral history held by the archives at MoRUS.
(East Villager, March 1988 from the Newspaper Collection in the MoRUS archives)
The paper began as Everything for Everybody; a publication put out by local activist and icon in the New York City Hippie scene, Jack Scully. It evolved into the East Villager published by Scully’s Everything for Everybody organization and was edited by the late Steven Vincent until August 1988 when Heidi Boghosian took helm of the paper. By 1990 its sleeker, more streamlined looking offshoot Lower East Side News, no longer published by EFE, was helping lead the charge of local media production in the Lower East Side.
Over the summer the archive committee at MoRUS processed a collection of East Villager and Lower East Side News newspapers spanning from 1987 to 1991, a run that encapsulates Boghosian’s involvement with the papers, conducted an oral history with the editor, and produced a public program with Boghosian and East Villager and LESN photographer John McBride to discuss their experiences with the underground press of this community.
(Heidi Boghosian and John McBride at Open Vault Night July 2021, photo by Andrew James)
In her oral history, Boghosian recalls what the paper meant to the community. At a time in which corporate consolidation of media was proliferating she acknowledges the presence of a robust media landscape in the neighborhood, “There were still many small local newspapers, but for me, the East Villager represented a real grassroots effort, it was really homespun…it was very much done by people living in the community, taking advantage of the resources within that community.” But despite that grassroots approach to creating a locally centered news source the paper did not lack substance. According to her, the East Villager carved a unique space for itself by “establish[ing] ourselves as the more…feature news and investigative reporting.” In doing so the East Villager and Lower East Side News were able to include diverse community perspectives. This allowed them to examine topical subjects and craft thorough exposes and meaningful community driven stories. When considering what she is most proud of regarding these papers, Boghosian offers this, “I feel like we were sort of tied into the pulse of, of actions that were going on in the Lower East Side and the East Village. Um, and I’m proud that we marshaled different voices.” These papers captured the essence of the community through a tumultuous era which saw public health initiatives started by the community in the absence of city response to the crack epidemic covered in the story “EVAC Hits the Streets;” the 1988 Tompkins Square Park Police Riot, the focus of the September ‘88 issue, and the eviction of community groups like the Redeemer Arts Performance Project in “The Harrows of RAPP.”
This grassroots approach, authentic to the neighborhood in nearly every way, was not without difficulties of course. In her oral history Boghosian remembers, burnout, low resources, and disagreement on how diverse the viewpoints included in a paper that segued from a group like Everything for Everybody should be. All these hindrances to the papers to varying degrees led to the folding of the East Villager in September 1989 and Lower East Side News in February 1991.
(Lower East Side News, February 1991 from the Newspaper Collection in the MoRUS archives)
These papers and more, as well as Boghosian’s oral history, and the recording of the Open Vault Night program, can be researched through the MoRUS archives. They are available digitally upon request (we are working on a forward facing collections management software) or physically in the archive by appointment. Please reach out to Archive Coordinator John Harris at jharris0093@gmail.com or email reclaimedurbanspace@gmail.com to explore the collection!